


Transitions

by Destina



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-22
Updated: 2006-03-22
Packaged: 2018-04-03 23:33:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4118742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Destina/pseuds/Destina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack may not be the leader of his team, but he can't seem to break away completely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Transitions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Barkley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Barkley/gifts).



> Set post-Stronghold, with additional spoilers for Prototype. Written and posted to LJ in 2006; posted to AO3 in June 2015.

Even after seven years of carrying one in his shirt pocket, Jack still loathed his cell phone on principle. It made him available to every yahoo with a corresponding phone on a minute-by-minute basis. Something was wrong with a world where there were no quiet places to hide anymore. But the reasons crystallized, above and beyond convenience, when Landry started calling him to tell him which of his team - Mitchell's team, he reminded himself, Mitchell's, now - were missing, hurt, in trouble. 

A part of him was waiting for the call he couldn't face, the one where Landry told him they were dead, all dead, or one of them, or a pair, and he would tell Landry he would see to the arrangements, and then there'd be silence on the other end. Generals weren't supposed to have copies of wills, stashed away in safety deposit boxes with personal letters to be delivered and lists of things to take care of. Generals weren't supposed to be that close to their people at all. Jack could imagine the look on Landry's face if he'd seen Jack carefully wrapping up Daniel's personal items, tucking them away in his own hall closet until Daniel came home. Insane - he knew it when he'd done it, and Teal'c and Sam had helped him, and hadn't said a word -- but then again, he'd been that way for a while, now. They all had. Hazards of the job. 

It was for this reason Jack had left the program, and they all damn well knew it. There were certain calls he couldn't make, didn't want to receive; certain things he wasn't willing to do, and now it was Landry's job to do them. It made him respect Landry all the more, and hate him just enough to assuage his guilt. 

Last time he'd received one of those pleasant little calls, it was from Daniel. In a stunning departure from the norm, Daniel had said almost nothing, which rang all Jack's alarm bells. He had almost broken his neck to get on the fastest military hop to the Springs. Amazing how his rank and position could make that hop happen on an empty plane. In his hand, he'd been holding an autopsy report on the alien Daniel called 'Anubis Junior' in a tone without humor. The body was riddled with bullets - thirty-seven, to be precise. 

It wasn't until Jack had Daniel drunk as hell and sitting on the floor of his apartment with a bottle in his lap that he knew just how many of those bullets were Daniel's. 

The only one that really counted, though, had been Daniel's - that crucial first shot, the one that opened the door. The one Anubis Junior hadn't seen coming. Everyone underestimated Daniel, at first. Even Jack. 

"He was right. I should have killed him before that," Daniel had said. "When I had the chance." 

"You made the argument. It wasn't your decision."

"Why wasn't it yours?" Daniel had asked him, chuckling low in a way that had raised the hair on Jack's arms. "You would've said that, right? You would've sat here, at the table, and said we should put that thing back where it came from, and you wouldn't have taken no for an answer."

"I might have had a stroke, if you'd suggested it," Jack had told him. There had never been a conversation Jack could remember where Daniel had been the one to advocate the military point of view - threat assess and eliminate. 

Mitchell's report had been an eye-opener, in that regard. 

Daniel said, "I knew. I warned them. No one would listen." There was something about Daniel's voice that had made Jack hand him another beer, had made him scoot just a little closer, waiting for the rest. But it never came. Apparently Daniel had learned more from Jack than the simple value of threat-assessment; he was able now to repress with the best of them. 

It was then that Jack realized a sea change was underway; each of his friends was becoming someone he barely knew at all, even though he knew them better than anyone else alive. Intimate strangers, as the saying goes. Jack poured Daniel into bed and sank down on Daniel's couch, rubbing his tired, gritty eyes. Daniel, who was used to being heard, listened to, even when Jack hated every word that came out of his mouth. Daniel, who was still there, left behind because Jack couldn't take him along, and he couldn't let him go, either. Atlantis was too damn far away. 

He wondered how Weir and Sheppard were doing with the whole 'don't get close, don't let it get too personal' thing. They'd had the talk. He hoped they'd taken it to heart, but if they were any good at their jobs, they probably hadn't. He understood all too well. 

The latest call had come from Landry - the last in a series of updates he'd been up all night waiting for. Teal'c, captured; Teal'c, rescued; Teal'c, certified 100% healthy and sound. Oh, and he'd been tortured and brainwashed by Ba'al and come through without any aftereffects, Landry said, in such a tone of boundless optimism that Jack actually winced. 

He took a little longer to get there, this time around - it was Teal'c, after all; he'd been tortured by smarter snakes than Ba'al - but when he knocked on the door of Teal'c's quarters, he had doughnuts in hand. "Miss me?" he said, proffering the pink box with one hand. Teal'c's smile said it all. As opposed to the old days, when Teal'c had neither smiled nor spoken, this was an improvement; the other side of sea change, and Jack let Teal'c have the chocolate-glazed. It seemed only fair. 

"So," Jack said, after Teal'c had doused about half the forest fire of candles in his quarters. The place had always smelled a little like an incense factory to Jack. "Who turned you on to scented candles?"

"Daniel Jackson."

Jack plucked at his uniform shirt. "Not good to go through the gate smelling like a vanilla bean."

"Unless you are Colonel Carter," Teal'c said, his eyes full of mischief, a look that once was so rare for Teal'c and now was almost standard issue. Jack felt a pang of regret. Joking with Teal'c was one of the things he missed most on a daily basis. He missed too many things to count. 

"The exception that proves the rule," Jack said. He slung his feet up and propped them on the corner of Teal'c's bed, so he could lean back in the exceptionally uncomfortable chair. Too bad Teal'c had given up soft furniture when he moved back to base; the vestiges of his Spartan lifestyle hung on with a vengeance in the military setting. "I thought you might be on Dakara."

"The referendum vote is two days away," Teal'c said. He sat easily on the edge of the bed, a half-eaten donut in one hand and a napkin in the other, the better to swipe at stray chocolate with. "General Landry expressed his wish that I remain here for observation in the meantime."

"Probably wise," Jack said. 

"Is that why you are here, O'Neill?" Teal'c set his donut down on the napkin. "To verify for yourself that I am not Ba'al's servant?"

"No," Jack said; then, "Well, that's not the only reason."

Teal'c met his eyes. "You have been deceived by me before when I was not myself. I could likely deceive you again, were I of a mind to do so."

"Hey, you know the old saying. Fool me twice, shoot me in the head. Anyway, what makes you think I didn't know right from the beginning when Apophis did his freaky mindwipe...thing...with you?"

"The fact that I nearly broke your nose," Teal'c purred, and now his smile was wide. "And the fact that you pronounced me fit for duty, some time after Doctor MacKenzie began working with me in his pitiful attempt to reverse the damage done to me by Apophis."

"Oh. Right. There were a couple clues." Jack sat up and put his feet down on the floor. "It isn't up to me anyway, Teal'c. But all the signs are there. You seem...normal." A beat. "And you killed Ba'al."

"Yes." Teal'c stood up, paced to the door, then turned. The room always seemed too small to contain him, and Jack still wished he could have found a way to integrate Teal'c into the big wide world. 

Jack had never been prone to nightmares, not after Cambodia, not even after Iraq. They were a recent phenomenon. They always began with a tingle in the center of his chest, a spreading itch that burrowed down into his skin. He'd scratch and pull and his breath would come faster, faster, until the burning started, and that's when his hands would fall to his sides, pinned by invisible bonds. He sometimes tried to call out, shaping a word that his throat ached to say, a name he had trained himself not to call, but there was no sound. Only the pinpoint of pain, blossoming slowly across his skin, deep into the nerves, sparks from a red-hot needle until his skin began to melt and his blood burned like pure acid in his veins. 

Sometimes he fell endlessly into darkness and woke face down, legs tangled in the sweat-soaked sheets; sometimes he woke on his back, arms splayed to the side, with the lingering smell of his own singed flesh hovering there with him. Sense-memory was a tricky thing. The conscious mind had trouble asserting control, once the dreams let go. 

Sometimes he was in free-fall, tumbling through a maze of bodies, and Ba'al's voice a soft growl at the edge of his ear: _tell me what I wish to know._ Those were the dreams that ended with a jolt; Jack would try to catch his breath, smoothing his fingers over his chest, tracing invisible scars. 

Teal'c was the only one who knew, who had seen what kind of rage blossomed in Jack after what he had suffered. Daniel might have known, once, but it was all forgotten now, left behind in the ashes of his ascended life. Just as well. It was difficult enough to forget that Teal'c knew, had seen it, taken the explosion of it. Handled it, in ways Jack knew they would never speak of again, though he could still feel Teal'c's hands on him, bruising him, Teal'c's strength, restraining him; Teal'c, able to take every ounce of destructive violence Jack could deliver, and let it pass through him, returning only tenderness. 

He cleared his throat, frowned, tried to get back into that narrow corridor where he could make light of things. "How was his technique?"

"Ineffective. He attempted to persuade me with pain, and deprivation. He then threatened me with imminent death."

"Ah. No wonder it didn't work." 

"Indeed." Teal'c turned and met his eyes again. Something glittered there, something Jack recognized, and it raised a shiver in him. "Unfortunately, his was a quick death. There was not time for more."

"Too bad," Jack agreed. He folded his arms over his chest, smiled the kind of smile that couldn't reach his eyes. "Wish I had been there."

"I am glad you were not." 

For a long moment, they looked at one another. Jack nodded slowly. Not much else to say, after that. "Things going okay with Mitchell?"

"As well as can be expected. He is an honorable man, and a brave one as well." Teal'c's expression said much more, so Jack went ahead and asked the question. 

"But?"

"He displays a degree of recklessness I find troubling." 

"Landry knows?"

"I am not certain." Teal'c was watching him, almost as though he expected more questions. "If you were to speak with Colonel Mitchell, he would benefit from your long experience as a leader."

Jack thought that over for a moment. Carter had already told him Mitchell was going through a tough time, that he was too quick to act, had endangered his life and possibly theirs, and could have cost them the mission altogether. She said it while looking at him in such a way that Jack knew she thought he'd understand completely, might even empathize with the guy. He wasn't sure what disturbed him worse - the fact that she thought so, or the fact that she was dead right. "He can't benefit from yours?"

"I do not believe so. He is not...receptive, at the moment."

"Ah." Been there, done that. Jack clapped his hands down on his knees and stood up. "T, you and I both know you can't tell a man things he isn't ready to hear."

"One can always try."

"One can," Jack said, leaving the obvious unsaid. Teal'c's smile crept back. "Listen, I'm going to be around for another day or so. You got plans for tomorrow?"

"My calendar is free," Teal'c said, in a shocking display of clichéd humor. Jack was sure he had taught Teal'c better than that, but it made him grin anyway. "Bring pizza. Without fruit."

"Have to watch that cheese," Jack said, patting his midsection and eyeing Teal'c's, which still appeared to be solid stone. If only he could manage that at 110, give or take thirty years. 

When the door closed behind him, he stood in the corridor, watching strangers walk by where friends used to be, and considered heading up to Landry's office to demand his team back. Mitchell wouldn't learn anything that way, though. 

Could be he did have something he could teach Mitchell, after all.


End file.
